Thank You

Announcing the 2013-14 Season

“Unto the Breach!”

(Memphis, TN, July 23, 2013) –– Tennessee Shakespeare Company (TSC), the Mid-South’s professional classical theatre, today announced its 2013-14 schedule of plays and education schools tour.

Following the record-breaking success of its fifth performance season, TSC was informed last month that its matching civic funding for its vast education programs in its community was being entirely eliminated. That same week, the National Endowment for the Arts/ArtsMidwest recognized TSC for its innovative education and performance programming with a matching Shakespeare in American Communities grant. TSC was one of the youngest organizations to receive the recognition.

In a matter of days, the grant was matched by Shakespeare supporters from Germantown, Memphis, the Mid-South, and from across the U.S. Letters from over 200 supporters to TSC and its community’s elected officials, together with their generosity, inspired a different type of beginning to TSC’s sixth season.

“It has been our mission since day one, and our responsibility to our community, that we always provide innovative educational student programming together with our professional Shakespeare productions at deep discount, or for free,” says founder and producing artistic director Dan McCleary. “I never want money to be the thing that prevents our community’s students from having a chance to love the plays of William Shakespeare and to learn from them on their own terms. And yes, for the record, I do believe Shakespeare can change the world for the better, and I’m starting with my hometown.

“Too many of our schools here are defined as ‘underprivileged’ and “underserved.’ So, we have work to do; and as long as we have 80 schools and nearly 15,000 students who want us teaching them and playing for them, like last year, then we will be determined to fill the breach created by the elimination of our municipal government funding for the coming season. If I have learned anything from my involvement in the plays of William Shakespeare in 25 years and from our galvanizing TSC supporters these past two months, it is that artistic courage and social activism, particularly in the face of adversity, can affect positive change.”

Unto the Breach!

The Un-Common Courage of William Shakespeare

Substituting for its usual full-cast production of a Shakespeare play in the autumn is a special two-performance Benefit show in the 824-seat Germantown Performing Arts Center/Duncan-Williams Performance Hall to help restore education funding to our community’s classrooms. Ticket revenue will go to TSC’s education program.

Unto the Breach! the Un-Common Courage of William Shakespeare will feature Dan McCleary and resident artist/Education Director Stephanie Shine on stage with music in this 90-minute exploration of Shakespeare’s courage of creativity, of the heart, of conviction, and of forgiveness. Scenes will be performed from plays Richard III, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Twelfth Night, Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth, As You Like It and more.

The Benefit show plays Saturday, September 7 at 7:30 pm and Tuesday, September 10 at 7:00 pm. A special all-school matinee with discounted tickets will be made possible by TSC’s sponsors on September 10 at 10:30 am at GPAC.

McCleary and Shine (Gertrude in TSC’s acclaimed Hamlet) take the stage for the first time together. A real-life married couple brought together by Shakespeare, both have more than 55 years of experience playing most of the canon, including 30 major/title roles.

Benefit tickets are $30, and seating is general admission. A special Free Will Kids’ Night is in effect for both performances: Children 17 years and younger will be admitted FREE when accompanied by a paying, attending guardian. Limit: four children per guardian. Press Opening is September 7 at 7:30 pm.

It’s a Wonderful Life:

A Live Radio Play

Back by popular demand is last year’s holiday hit It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play playing November 20 – December 8, 2013, in the Winegardner Auditorium at Dixon Gallery & Gardens in Memphis, directed by Stephanie Shine.

Sponsored by FedEx Corporation and adapted for the stage by Joe Landry, It’s a Wonderful Life returns the Bailey family to the stage to celebrate everyone’s end-of-year holidays. The loving classic that embraces the beset George Bailey as he discovers how wonderful his life really is transfers from the famous black-and-white film version to a live 1946 radio play, complete with period jingles, carols, and creative sound effects. Returning cast: Amelia Fischer, Bradley Kroeker, Lorraine Cotton, and WKNO’s Jim Eikner as Clarence Oddbody, Angel 2nd Class.

Tickets for the November 20 Preview performance are $15. Free Will Kids’ Nights are on November 21, 28, and December 5. WKNO Memphis public radio will broadcast the November 21 performance live on 91.1 FM at 7:00 pm. Press Opening is November 21 at 7:00 pm.

Romeo and Juliet

Made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts/ArtsMidwest and Shakespeare in American Communities, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet plays Germantown Performing Arts Center/Duncan-Williams Performance Hall on January 28 and 30 at 7:00 pm, directed by Stephanie Shine. Three, discounted morning matinees that week for school students will also be made available.

Experience the full-bodied love story as if for the first time with these professional, young players. The play everyone is introduced to in their early teen years on the page comes vibrantly alive on the GPAC stage as a cast of eight explores the mortal acts of too-young lovers who bury their parents' strife with their lives.

This production is inspired by TSC’s innovative Romeo and Juliet Project, which has been raising grades, changing young lives, and affecting entire student bodies throughout the Memphis area for two years.

Parents are invited to discover with their children all of the heart-felt, or well-intentioned, or tragic decisions made by the play’s teenagers and adults alike in this “two hours traffic of our stage,” followed by a community forum with the audience, actors, and director.

A special Free Will Kids’ Night is in effect for both performances: Children 17 years and younger will be admitted FREE when accompanied by a paying, attending guardian. Limit: four children per guardian. Press Opening is January 28 at 7:00 pm.

Fifth Annual Valentine’s Gala

Save the Date with your special someone at GPAC on February 14, 2014! Broadway celebrities Charles Strouse and Marin Mazzie & Jason Danieley have taken center stage the last two years. Guess who’s romancing you this year! (We will announce soon.) Singular live/silent auction items and trips, sumptuous fare, flowing spirits, and a once-in-a-lifetime performance will make this a night to remember.

Don’t miss the Fifth Annual Valentine’s Gala –the most original, fun party of the year! For single tickets and sponsorships of ten seats, please call TSC’s Development Office at (901) 759-0620.

The Taming of the Shrew

William Shakespeare’s early commedia piece The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Dan McCleary, plays inside the Dixon’s Winegardner Auditorium from April 23 – May 4, 2014, in Memphis.

One of Shakespeare’s most outrageously funny and controversial plays shows up quite by accident on the 1927 doorstep of Mr. Hugo Dixon of Memphis, Tennessee. He hires the traveling theatre troupe to perform a play for mirth and merriment in his luxurious home, which one day will become Dixon Gallery & Gardens.

In the play, Kate neither looks nor acts like her younger, alluring sister Bianca – nor any other woman, for that matter. This is bad news for Bianca, since she cannot wed until Kate does. Any man who’s man enough to tackle the shrewish Kate wins a wealthy dowry, says her father, but is Kate too high a price to pay? Not for the recently destitute Petruchio. He arrives looking to wed for riches, not love. The meeting of Petruchio and Kate is one of the hallmark scenes in all of theatre.

But something happens after their name-calling, arm-wrestling, horse-riding, sleep-deprived, mutually-starved trip to the altar – they inexplicably fall in love.

Tickets for the April 23-24 Preview performances are $15. Free Will Kids’ Nights are on April 24 and May 1. Press Opening is April 25 at 7:00 pm.

Sponsored by Ann and Wellford Tabor, and The Dunbar Abston Fund for Sustainable Excellence.

The Mid-South Schools Tour:

Shake(s), Rattle, & Roll

It's hip. It's cool. It's an adventure with the original SOUL MAN! Students will discover chart-topping, toe-tapping, feet-stomping, got-to-jump-out-of-your-seat-and-move-with-it SHAKESPEARE – direct from Memphis! Featuring Slade Kyle, two actors play with breathtaking dexterity through a whirlwind of scenes and soliloquies sure to make students want to SHOUT!

Directed and created by Stephanie Shine, Shake(s), Rattle, & Rollis a 45-minute show, with accompanying talk-back, that travels to schools in the Mid-South, across Tennessee, and throughout the Southeast from October 2013 through April 2014. Call TSC’s Education Office to book your school or class at (901) 759-0620.

Tickets for all non-Gala performances are $30. Tickets for all Preview performances are only $15. All Thursday nights are Free Will Kids’ Nights: Children 17 years and younger are admitted FREE when accompanied by a paying/attending guardian. All performances of Unto the Breach! and Romeo and Juliet are Free Will Kids’ Nights. Dixon members receive 20% off their tickets for all Dixon performances. Seniors and Students receive 20% of their tickets to any non-Gala performance. No refunds/exchanges.

Performances are general admission; first come/first seated. Free parking. Cast/schedule subject to change.

All Opening Nights include a complementary post-show dessert and champagne toast with the actors.

Saturday, September 7 at 7:30 pm and Tuesday, September 10 at 7:00 pm, 2013

TICKETS:

$30 adults; 20% discount for Seniors/Students; FREE for children 17 and younger when accompanied by a paying/attending guardian

ABOUT:

Featuring Dan McCleary and Stephanie Shine in an effort to restore live professional Shakespeare to our community’s classrooms, this Benefit performance showcases through his plays Shakespeare’s courage of the heart, conviction, creativity, and redemption.

$15 on November 20 preview/$30 on all other dates for adults; 20% discount for Seniors/Students; FREE for children 17 and younger when accompanied by a paying/attending guardian on November 21, 28, December 5

ABOUT:

The holiday classic for the entire family returns to the Dixon in this 1940s live radio play featuring the good-hearted George Bailey, Angel 2nd Class Clarence Oddbody, and lots of period jingles and music.

Featuring a Broadway headliner soon to be announced (“Annie” composer Charles Strouse and Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie with Jason Danieley headlined the last two years), this education Gala includes sumptuous fare and fun, rare live and silent auctions.

$15 on April 23-24 previews/$30 on all other dates for adults; 20% discount for Seniors/Students; FREE for children 17 and younger when accompanied by a paying/attending guardian on April 24 and May 1

ABOUT:

It’s 1927 and Hugo Dixon of Park Avenue, Memphis (located where the Dixon Gallery is today), has given a bed to homeless man and board to a travelling theatre troupe, creating an evening of mirth and merriment in his home featuring the infamous comic love story of the bounding Petruchio and the shrewish Kate.

News

Back by popular demand: The Shakespeare Brunch

Three New Board Members and Officers Announced for 2016-17

TSC Announces Full Ninth Season

The Oliver Experiment

Photo: Elliot LaPlante. Kelli Radwanski Photography

Back by popular demand:

The Shakespeare Brunch

Join us for an elegant Sunday brunch, drinks, and an abbreviated Shakespeare reading in a beautiful indoor setting. Acted by some of your favorite TSC players, the reading is preceded by a delicious and thematic buffet with cash bar. Your $40 ticket includes the buffet and reading.

Three New Board Members and Officers Announced for 2016-17

(November 7, 2016) - Tennessee Shakespeare Company today announced its 26-member Board of Directors unanimously approved the elections of three new members and a slate of new Officers to its Executive Committee for FY17.

Rotating to TSC’s Emeritus Founders Board is educator Ruth Dunning, who helped create the Company in 2007-08.

Pat Casserly Kelly, though she still finds herself teaching, is the retired chair of the English and Humanities departments at The Hutchison School and its recipient of the Margaret Wellford Tabor chair for Excellence in Teaching English. In her teaching career, she emphasized the great writers and thinkers of the Western tradition—Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Austen, Dickens, Hardy—as she encouraged her students to become lovers of literature and independent and creative thinkers. Mrs. Kelly was a president of the Shelby-Memphis Council of Teachers of English and was recognized as a Teacher of Excellence by the National Council Teachers of English. She was a recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities study grants, and was chosen by the U.S. Department of State for a teacher exchange program in Eurasia. She served two terms on the vestry of St. Elisabeth’s Church in Raleigh and was the Director of Religious Education there for 15 years. Currently a communicant at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, she serves as a lector, a Lay Eucharistic Minister, a member of the hospitality committee, and is serving her first year of her term on the Chapter of the Cathedral.

Michael R. Marshall is legal counsel at Evans Petree in Memphis. He is the co-leader of the Labor and Employment section and uses his experience in other arenas to reach solutions and resolutions to his clients’ disputes. He has extensive experience in litigating and resolving employment matters and other business-related disputes. He is a frequent speaker on employment-related topics. Mr. Marshall was the lead attorney in a case brought by the Memphis City Schools against the City of Memphis and obtained a $57 million verdict for education funding. Mr. Marshall graduated from the University of California and Southern Methodist University School of Law. He is a member of the American Bar Association Member, Tennessee Bar Association Member, and Memphis Bar Association member. He is admitted to practice law in Tennessee and Texas. Mr. Marshall has also served as the General Counsel for the Memphis City Schools, and is the general counsel for the Shelby County Emergency Communications District and for Lausanne Collegiate School.

Melanie Stovall Murry is General Counsel at the University of Memphis. Mrs. Murry joined the University in December 2002, serving as associate and assistant counsel. She was also an adjunct faculty member for the doctoral program in higher education administration for the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences. She serves as an instructor at the Tennessee Institute for Pre-law. Mrs. Murry graduated from the Tennessee Bar Association’s Leadership Law program and was a 2008 fellow of the New Memphis Institute. She is a graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, and has a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Saint Louis University.

Tennessee Shakespeare CompanyAnnounces Full Ninth Season of Plays and Educational Activities for 2016-17

(Memphis, TN; August 11, 2016)-- Tennessee Shakespeare Company, the Mid-South’s professional, classical theatre, today announced its full 2016-17 season of plays, outreach programs, and Education initiatives in the Memphis area and beyond.

Launching TSC’s ninth season is its first production of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Directed by TSC Founder and Producing Artistic Director Dan McCleary, the adaptation will perform in the Wiener Theater on the campus of Hutchison School in East Memphis from September 20 through October 2. The play is produced in partnership with Hutchison. The cast of 20 actors features Broadway veteran Patrick Ryan Sullivan as Atticus Finch, Memphian Ainsley Geno as Scout, and the return of TSC favorite Tony Molina, Jr. as Rev. Sykes.

Early Bird tickets are on sale now for To Kill a Mockingbird: the first 24 seats sold to each performance will be located in the new Best Seats section of the theatre.

In the winter, TSC returns to Dixon Gallery & Gardens for the holiday season with an elegant, celebratory Much Ado About Nothing befitting the season of cheer. Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, directed by McCleary, plays on the Winegardner Auditorium stage December 8-18.

The fun continues in early summer with Shakespeare’s boisterous comedy of mistaken identities. The Comedy of Errors, produced in partnership with the University of Memphis’ Department of Theatre & Dance, will play the U of M mainstage June 8-18, 2017.

The Southern Literary Salons return, featuring the works of Eudora Welty (Mississippi Myth) on January 27 and Flannery O’Connor (Georgia Gothic) on April 21. These literary parties in beautiful, private homes from 6:00-8:00 pm curate readings, light fare, and writer-specific libations.

Back by popular demand is The Shakespeare Brunch, featuring abbreviated, staged readings of a redemptive The Winter’s Tale (November 20) and a provocative The Merchant of Venice (May 21) preceded by an expansive brunch buffet and bar. Acted by some of TSC’s best-known actors, the Brunches run from 12:30-3:30 pm inside the elegant Memphis Hunt & Polo Club.

The season also includes the Eighth Annual Shakespeare Gala, bringing to Memphis a new Broadway headliner on Friday, March 10, 2017, at Germantown Performing Arts Center. The Gala, complete with lavish dinner and open bars located throughout the theatre, supports TSC’s nationally-acclaimed Education Program.

This season, the Education Program significantly expands its anti-violence schools residency and performance schedule of The Romeo and Juliet Project. Nine actor/teaching-artists will work in over 20 schools, largely underserved, in Shelby County from September through February, reaching more than 6,000 students. Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, a fun 2-actor introduction to the playwright’s essential scenes and soliloquies, will tour schools and theatres throughout the southeastern United States. Both productions are created and directed by TSC Education Director Stephanie Shine.

TSC’s season partners are Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Hutchison School, Shelby County Schools, St. George’s Church, and the University of Memphis’ Department of Theatre & Dance. The season is funded under a Grant Contract with the State of Tennessee.

“Our ninth season is a response both to the world’s recent events and to our patrons’ desires,” says McCleary. “To Kill a Mockingbird is an American masterpiece of the 20th Century. It is time for each of us to pick up Harper Lee’s novel and read or re-read it. In Much Ado About Nothing, we are a nation of peace at home and abroad, and in this dream we go pleasure-seeking. Still, uninhibited love is surprisingly difficult to give away in this environment, to both comedic and tragic effect. And in Comedy of Errors, famous for its physical and archetypal humor, we find ourselves in a world in which the mortal threat to immigrants cannot prevent this non-traditional family, even after years of separation, from making a heart-felt discovery.

“I am deeply grateful to our season sponsors, production partners, and over 300 donors who make professional, classical theatre and our education programming possible. The work we do with children in our schools is immediate, impactful, proven, and a powerful model for successful replication throughout the United States. We live in a time when the arts, and experiencing Shakespeare’s plays, need to be at the center of our national educational curriculum, not subsisting on the fringes. They are not a luxury, they are for everyone. The works of William Shakespeare are our birthright, and if they are supported educationally and financially then we see first-hand how our children enthusiastically embrace his compassion, his poetry, and his open-hearted query of humanity.”

Sponsored by Theatrical Rights Worldwide (NYC)Presents its Third Musical in Development August 15 on the University of Memphis mainstage:

The Oliver Experiment

What if your entire life were a Broadway musical…and you had no clue?

Featuring Broadway’s Brightest Stars

Memphis, TN (July 27, 2015) – Tennessee Shakespeare Company, in partnership with the University of Memphis’ Department of Theatre & Dance, presents its third and final developing musical reading on the U of M mainstage with The Oliver Experiment by Jeremy Desmon and Jeff Thomson on August 15 at 7:00 pm.